Ali Winston
Fruitvale injunction defendant Rubel Leal addresses the Oakland City Council on May 17, 2011
[N.B. This post has been updated to reflect the difference in Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts' comments following the shooting of Carlos Nava and the actions of Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Larry Reid]
The call for more gang injunctions in Oakland has become a full-court press over the past week following the killing of 3-year-old Carlos Fernandez Nava. At an August 11th press conference about the arrest of Nava’s alleged shooter, Police Chief Anthony Batts said it was time Oaklanders took a serious look at gang injunctions:
“Enough with excuses, enough with not doing the right thing, enough with not addressing injunctions, not wanting to do curfews, enough with not taking hard stances,” Batts said. “Because enough life has been lost.”
Oakland Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Larry Reid took the Nava shooting as an opportunity to call for additional injunctions in West and East Oakland in addition to a citywide youth curfew. A sharp uptick in homicides and gun violence is the impetus for the outcry for these anti-crime measures.
In a Sunday editorial, the Oakland Tribune called for the implementation of a citywide youth curfew to curb youth violence. Were Oakland to pass a curfew, either youth themselves or their parents, or both, could be fined if they fail to obey. Tribune columnist Tammerlin Drummond also came out in support of further injunctions and a curfew to rein in the city’s crime rate last week.
“Things will never improve until our city and community leaders are willing to invest the time, energy and money to craft a comprehensive strategy for attacking the rampant street killing,” Drummond wrote last Monday.
There has been vocal opposition to gang injunctions since former City Attorney John Russo filed Oakland’s first such case against nineteen alleged members of a North Oakland gang in early 2010. Though the North Oakland injunction was approved by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman with little opposition, a substantial community mobilization against the injunctions and a team of pro-bono defense attorneys dragged out the passage of Oakland’s second injunction against Norteños in the Fruitvale over several months of court hearings.
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